When Was Satan Cast Down from Heaven?

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Elijah_Baley

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I don’t know the chronology, but I have a pet theory about the meaning of the whole creation — as opposed to the meaning of man’s creation — and it may hinge on this point. Or maybe not, as God is outside time.

Thanks in advance.
 
Don’t think anyone really knows the answer, but it was before the fall of man… Could be before God created Earth ??
 
Will_B said:
Don’t think anyone really knows the answer, but it was before the fall of man… Could be before God created Earth ??
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Didn’t God banish him* to the Earth* and make him ruler?
 
No one really knows the answer, but a speculation that I often heard and that I find rather convincing suggests that the notion of time, as we sort-of-understand it with respect to the material universe, is not entirely applicable to Heaven or to spiritual entities.

If this is the case, then the question about how much time passed between Satan’s creation and his fall, or between the fall and the creation of humankind, may be entirely meaningless.
Medic Mark:
Didn’t God banish him to the Earth and make him ruler?
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No.

We have very little information concerning what happened during Satan’s rebellion and fall, but he is not the ruler of anything - not even of Hell.
 
Elijah_Baley said:
I don’t know the chronology, but I have a pet theory about the meaning of the whole creation — as opposed to the meaning of man’s creation — and it may hinge on this point. Or maybe not, as God is outside time.

Thanks in advance.
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Hi Elijah! Welcome back to the Faith. When God created the Angels He endowed them with such knowledge that one angel will have more knowledge about God than all the saints put together. In that knowledge the Angels were given to know the consequences to disobedience if they sinned. God forewarned them just as He did to Adam and Eve. Yet in that foreknowledge some of them decided to disobey and God had to punish them immediately. But they were forewarned. Jesus said He saw Satan fall like lightening and that he the devil became a murderer from the beginning. The Fall of the Angels happened quickly. But what is God to do with them? God does not waste them that is He has a purpose and allows or gives permission for the evil spirits to tempt us. Rather than saying the devil is ruler of this earth it is more accurate to say the devil is permitted by God to tempt mankind. But the devil’s freedom is only that. He is constrained by God so are all the devils only to do what God permits. They are on a leash. They cannot go beyond what God allows unless God gives them permission to do so. Remember Jesus words when He said to the Apostles the devil has asked to sift you as wheat. Only God can give the devils more permission and to some He does allow. We see this in the story of Job and the Saints of the Church and ultimately with His Son. The devil and his angels are all in a state of hell. Pope John Paul II calls the devil perverted and such he is. All the evil spirits are perverted and finally when God comes at the 2nd Coming they will all cease their activity to tempt and God will show their shameful faces and cast them into the everlasting Hell. But from the beginning of the creation of man until now and then to the 2nd coming God uses them.
 
Okay. So let me run this by you guys.

God loves all things, including Satan. This is established. I hypothesize that the purpose of all creation is to convert Satan back to God. As this is only possible in linear time, my theory requires Satan to be within or somehow constrained by time, either by his choice or God’s will.
  1. One of the attributes of God is that He is outside time.
  2. If you are outside time of your own accord, you are God.
  3. Only God is outside time by His own accord.
    Conclusion: Only by the grace of God is any other entity — the communion of saints, angels — outside time.
The rest of the argument comes like this:
  1. God respects free will as an attribute of His love.
  2. Satan, using free will, denied God.
    Conclusion: God will not alter Satan’s free will.
  3. God loves all things.
  4. God would want — not will — that all be drawn toward him.
    Conclusion: God does the precise amount which may convince, in a kind of dialog rather than in a kind of buttering of the mind, that all be drawn toward him.
  5. Satan has a particularly powerful sense of pride, which informs his free will.
  6. It would take something great to convince Satan to turn to God.
    Conclusion: Something as small as the human species or something as precisely large as the cosmos was designed to convince Satan, precisely at the end of time and no sooner, to turn back to God.
The realm with God and all other entities who are outside time is called Heaven. Is Hell sustained by God’s grace as well, or is it a matter of souls turning away from God? The Great Divorce greatly influences my beliefs about Heaven and Hell, and is a better illustration than I can provide.

Because I am ignorant of sufficient detail in this matter, I would ask that someone refute my theory soundly. Otherwise I believe I may believe it because I came up with it and not because it is true, and that is one very serious error I’d rather avoid. I am aware that my interpretation relies very strongly on the idea that there is more after the Apocalypse than is revealed.

If this does not contradict doctrine, and I consistently say that this is only a hypothetical and not a definite deduction, would it saying it be immoral?
 
Yeh, I think you are a bit mixed up. Have you tried reading the Cathechism lately? It will be helpful. Try not dwell too much on the devil. He and the rest of the evil spirits are already judged. They cannot repent. If you will like to know why it is because of their nature or more precise the type of material they are made of. Angels are pure spirit. Therefore they do not have a body like ours. They can seemingly show themselves as an appearance of a body but the body they will show to us is only for appearance and it is not physical. Because Angels are pure spirit their wills become very important to them. Once their will is made up it cannot alter or change. For instance an Angel cannot change his mind. God has given the Angels an incredible amount of knowledge so much that 1 angel possesses more knowledge of God than all the Saints put together. This is why the devil can pretend to be like Jesus because of the profound knowledge God gave to him from the beginning. The devil can fool us and at times he has done that through false apparitions. Once the Holy Angels made up their minds to serve God, they were preserved by Him in Grace. When the disobedient angels decided to not to follow God a change occured within them and they permamently loss all Grace of God and fell into a permament state of Hell. This change within them was the result of their disobedience and God had no cure for them. The only warning God gave them were in that knowledge that He gave to all the Angels when He first created them. But sadly the devil and the rest of the evil spirits decided not to listen to that warning. And the result was their own damnation. Imagine given all that knowledge in advance and they still sinned anyway. But man is created differently. He has a will like the angels but unlike the angels man has a body. We also have a soul that is contained in that body. The soul which is contained in the body is of the same material like the Angels. But unlike the Angels who can’t repent man is able to repent as long as his soul is contained in that body. The human will which is part of the eternal soul works with the body in so much that it is able to repent after sinning as long as the soul is in that body. Once the soul leaves the body as in the case of death then the soul is much like the same way the Angels are and the condition of your will at that moment determines what state you will be for eternity. So we are very much like the Angels in judgement the only difference is that God will grant humanity repentance only within the confines when the soul is within the body. We will be judged but it will take longer. Because man is not endowed with knowledge of God when he is born he has a better chance to acquire it while living while at the same time given the opportunity to repent through Grace and Mercy. After we die we can no longer repent. Our wills become permamently fixed because we do not have a body and only our souls after death. After the 2nd Coming when everyone will receive a resurrected body then man becomes glorified like the Holy Angels. Sadly those who willfilly choose total seperation from God at the moment of death cannot change their condition and they become in their fallen state the same state as the fallen angels.
 
Even if it were heresy, thinking about it and mulling it over is not sin. One does not fully accept truth until he has rejected heresy.

You have an interesting hypothesis.
I t would suggest that either saving Satan is more important than saving others or that all will be saved eventually. The primary assumption that God loves Satan needs to be reconciled with the fact that he hates those who love to do violence.
 
Dear Opening Thread…

During my evangelical days I was engrossed somewhat by this question. Now being a Devout Catholic I open my bible to the same point and I see a better translation of matters.

Turn to EZEKIEL 28:11- 19

This point of scripture speaks about Satan before the Fall, how God made him and how he used to be on the mountain of God. And how he fell by the justice of God because of his “number of crimes”, “by the dishonesty of your trading”… and so it goes on…

During my evangelical days I always thought of Satan as an Archangel before the Fall… but I have heard catholic Sermons stating that he was a Seraphim… so it throws our my evangelical theory that he roamed the earth, and that this planet was his dominion, however Christ does refer to him as the “prince of this world”…

They have missed their chance of repentence, so they are beyond any salvation. Period!

Thanks

P.S and yes the rebellion was before the creation of Man.
 
The Book of Job1:6-12 finishes with these words “So Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord”
Does this mean Satan is still able to be in the presence of the Lord? The gate to heaven is not shut to Satan now?
 
If God created Satan outside the constrains of time, would that mean Satan decided to deny God at the moment of his creation? Or, is there a type of progression of events in Heaven without time? That would mean Satan denied God in a sequence of events but without time being a part? Is that possible?
 
fbl9 said:
The Book of Job1:6-12 finishes with these words “So Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord”
Does this mean Satan is still able to be in the presence of the Lord? The gate to heaven is not shut to Satan now?
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I thought this story was considered a parable, but after looking at the Navarre, I saw where I erred.

"In this book, Satan does not yet mean ‘The Devil’, the fallen angel who tempts man to sin. He is the prosecutor who denounces man to God for his sins. (cf. Zech. 3.1).
 
FaithJoy said:
If God created Satan outside the constrains of time, would that mean Satan decided to deny God at the moment of his creation? Or, is there a type of progression of events in Heaven without time? That would mean Satan denied God in a sequence of events but without time being a part? Is that possible?
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Can you really get a handle around what it is like outside of time? If you can, you are far, far smarter than me! 😉
 
I am going to recommend this series to everyone, called ‘‘Chronicles of Brothers’’ by Wendy Alec - its a Christian series based on the 3 Archangel brothers Michael, Gabriel and Lucifer. In the first book, is about Michael’s victory over Satan. In it, God gives the then ‘‘good’’ Lucifer Earth to look over, Michael the sun and Gabriel the moon. Lucifer begins to turn when man was made, as man is loved so much by God. The story is in Gabriel’s POV…and very good!

The second book of the series is based on our Lord’s time, and once again in Gabriel’s POV most of the time.

I recommend this series to everyone!!
 
FaithJoy said:
If God created Satan outside the constrains of time, would that mean Satan decided to deny God at the moment of his creation? Or, is there a type of progression of events in Heaven without time? That would mean Satan denied God in a sequence of events but without time being a part? Is that possible?
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I subscribe to your hypothesis, that there is a sequencing but without time.

In such a case, events that we think of as taking a long time and those that happen instantaneously exist in sort of a quantum state. Each state is a new creation in a sequence but there is no time. God speaks and it happens instantaneously.

Adam named all the animals. Surely it took longer than one of our days, yet it is related as though it happened instantaneously.

Creation is said to have taken six days, yet there was no earth sun by which to reckon time for the first days. If he spoke it into existence, an instant, an eon or a day is the same thing.

These things all have sequences, yet happened before the fall, likely in a timeless state. Perhaps time itself is the result of the fall.
In the sensus plenior. the directions of the compass relate to time and space. Concerning space, North is heaven and south the earth. Concerning time, East is eternity and West is ‘filthy time’. Time is the great destroyer. Everything decays.

Also in the sensus plenior, each day of Gen 1 is a picture of Christ. They are parallel to each other, but we read them as though they are sequential. Gen 1.1 says everything was created in an instant, then the list of days are a quantum sequence that happened within the instant.
 
Will_B said:
Don’t think anyone really knows the answer, but it was before the fall of man… Could be before God created Earth ??
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As you and many others have pointed out Nobody really knows when.
Lucifer (Satan) was thrown out of heaven and eternity along with all his demonic minions.

I couldn’t even ascertain the foggiest of guess in the time-frame of the Cosmos, other than the writings in Genesis where he comes on the scene before Adam and Eve.

However; I have read some very interesting stories of conjecture in Chinese philosophy that also speaks of the great war that broke out in heaven. I can’t find the paper now that probably got thrown in the trash. Anyways it stated that the Evil One “Satan” was so enraged when he was thrown out of heaven onto the planet earth that he deliberately destroyed the entire ecosystem of the planet earth. God in turn had to take more powers away from Satan and re-create the earth to its former beauty.

Of course this is based on conjecture with nothing to verify if such ever happened.

As for me I’ll stick with Genesis and the book of the Apocalypse that speaks about the Great War that broke out in heaven.

Peace
Chris
 
lucifer had made it into the Garden of Eden. So he was here before before Adam and Eve.

Exactly where in this creation he arrives really isn’t the issue. The issue is that he’s here and the War of Good and evil rage’s on toward the end. Of course we know the predicted outcome. But we don’t know what the cost will be? Severe to be sure.
 
After god made the angels, lucifer because of his gifts from god became pridefull and refused to honor the comming of mary a creature lower than himself. Despite his knowledege of the consequences he was determine not obey god. Shortly after the creation of the angels he was cast out of heaven never to regain his magesty, but became the leader of all those that followed him straight into hell where he hopes and works hard to send all of us as well.
Robert.
 
ralozano said:
After god made the angels, lucifer because of his gifts from god became pridefull and refused to honor the comming of mary a creature lower than himself. Despite his knowledege of the consequences he was determine not obey god. Shortly after the creation of the angels he was cast out of heaven never to regain his magesty, but became the leader of all those that followed him straight into hell where he hopes and works hard to send all of us as well.
Robert.
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Was it Dante who said, “Better to reign in hell, than to serve in heaven”?

If Pride can do this to the greatest angel, just think what it can do to you and me.
 
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